BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

Has the International Criminal Court, as Paul Kagame charged, ‘been put in
place only for African countries’? Having spent hundreds of millions of
dollars, only securing its first conviction on 14 March, it might also
be thought a shameful waste of resources. All that effort, just to
convict Thomas Lubanga Dyilo
for recruiting children as soldiers nearly ten years ago.

Prosecuting
criminals with vast resources at their disposal, however, is neither
cheap nor easy – some of them are heads of state, after all, and have
vast funds with which to fend off justice. This was also the court’s
first case. It needed to be a success.

So much for the resources. And
the fairness? ‘Why not Argentina,
why not Myanmar, why not Iraq?’ Jean
Ping complained. The court’s answer was, because most of the
cases were
themselves referred by Africans. They knew their own countries were too
fragile to bring to justice villains of such magnitude.

Which, lest we
forget, the ICC did. Lubanga was a frequent visitor to these pages in
2002 and 2003 during the worst of the Congo-Kinshasa
bloodbath, a
cruel, greedy warlord with the blood of tens of thousands of Congolese
civilians on his hands. There were many like him. Indeed, in the lonely
years to come, he may echo Ping’s words and ask, ‘Why me?’ Why not
those who gave him orders, sponsored, condoned and collaborated with
him, such as first the Ugandan,
and then the Rwandan,
governments?

Over a hundred people tried to storm a police station in Khartoum’s Ed Deim area on 6 March after Awadia Agabna died in clashes with police. Protests then spread. She was from the Nuban Ama tribe’s royal family, whose head is Nayal Edam, a member of the National Islamic Front government after its 1989 coup. Awadia stood for the National Congress Party in the 2010 elections.

Despite bombing civilians, the National Congress Party (NCP) has some success abroad in the propaganda war, persuading governments to accept its version of events: that the Sudan People’s Liberation Front/Army-North (SPLM/A-N), backed by its former comrades in Juba, launched an unnecessary war in South Kordofan and Blue Nile when negotiations were under way.

The announcement of these grandiose schemes in Parliament last month coincides with leadership contests within the governing African National Congress, which will choose its presidential candidate at its conference in Mangaung in December. Critics claim that wealthy ANC supporters will be promised state contracts in return for political and financial backing.Amid the global economic slowdown, the government aims to double the current average growth rate of about 3.5 % a year and create 5 million new jobs by 2020.

Infrastructure investment is financed partly from the National Treasury or appropriations by Parliament. Yet a large share of the finance comes from the budgets of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), national and provincial departments, and municipalities.

The process of drafting the new constitution is teetering towards collapse. So the various factions are honing their plans for what could be a bruising election campaign under the existing law. The five-year electoral cycle ends early next year but rivalries within each party militate against any of them adopting a coherent plan by then.

Tendai Biti has been the star both of the Movement for Democratic Change as its General Secretary and of the Government of National Unity as its Finance Minister. He was perhaps lucky, as his predecessors had so ruined the economy that some recovery was inevitable and he was helped by the coming on stream of diamond and platinum mines.

Bitterness is growing in the disputes within the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi and government and CCM skeletons are refusing to stay in the closet. The latest row concerns the Deputy Minister for Works, Harrison Mwakyembe, and whether or not he was poisoned by rivals anxious to prevent corrupt officials coming to justice.

In mid-February, the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s old guard and their well-connected business friends experienced a collective shudder when the former Bank of Tanzania (BOT) Governor, Daudi Ballali, started broadcasting on micro-messaging service Twitter. @daudibalali has tweeted over 250 times, with messages such as ‘It’s time to go home. I didn’t die, I’m not dead.’

BLUE LINES

THE INSIDE VIEW

Has the International Criminal Court, as Paul Kagame charged, ‘been put in
place only for African countries’? Having spent hundreds of millions of
dollars, only securing its first conviction on 14 March, it might also
be thought a shameful waste of resources. All that effort, just to
convict Thomas Lubanga Dyilo
for recruiting children as soldiers nearly ten years ago.

The British Broadcasting Corporation’s decision to eviscerate its highly successful African Service looks counterproductive. It is all the more surprising given that Africa is being targeted by well-financed Chinese, Iranian, Qatari, Russian and Turkish media organisations, all keen to supplant the BBC’s influence.